And, of course, the best-selling book ever is the Bible, with an estimated 5 billion plus sold.
Do we know it's the case that these 5,000,000 Bibles are actually
sold, as opposed to handed out/given away?
Though, as we know, there are many atheists who may have bought one, but have never read it, though they pretend they have.
How do you know that they're pretending?
*
It's a bit of a weird mish-mash to me. I've read five of Tyson's eight (1/3/4/5/8) and am reasonably conversant with the contents of the others.
Gulliver's Travels is certainly worth reading - when I was little it was often presented as a well-loved children's book, but for adults it's a biting satire on the follies of religion, culture and other human behaviours - but it's a bit of a peculiar choice for a list of books that any intelligent person should read/have read. Tyson says that
"If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world", and that's true up to a point, but I'd say that if you want a better idea still you'd drop
Gulliver's Travels in favour of something like
The Communist Manifesto and/or the first volume of
Capital, which have had
incalculably more reach and influence on innumerable human beings. A few years back Melvyn Bragg wrote a book called
Twelve Books that Changed the World (a liberal construal of the word 'book'; some are in fact documents). Bragg's choices were:
1.
Principia Mathematica (1687) — Isaac Newton
2.
Married Love (1918) — Marie Stopes
3.
Magna Carta (1215)
4.
Book of Rules of Association Football (1863)
5.
On the Origin of Species (1859) — Charles Darwin
6.
On the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1789) — William Wilberforce in Parliament, immediately printed in several versions
7.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) — Mary Wollstonecraft
8.
Experimental Researches in Electricity (three volumes, 1839, 1844, 1855) by Michael Faraday
9.
Patent Specification for Arkwright’s Spinning Machine (1769) — Richard Arkwright
10.
The King James Bible (1611) — William Tyndale and 54 scholars appointed by the king
11.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) — Adam Smith
12.
The First Folio (1623) — William Shakespeare
(Of these specifically I've read 3, 7 and 12).
Whether it's books/documents which have changed the world or - a slightly different concept - books that every well-informed and intelligent person should read/have read, it's an interesting challenge ... I'm going to have fun coming up with a list of my own
